San Diego seminar on Race and Membership. Facing History and Ourselves, Museum of Man, and Museum of Photographic Arts. Summer 2017.

1. Race and
Membership in
American History
An Interdisciplinary Approach

2. Wednesday, August 2
Connections

3. “A Changing America”
The Progressive Era

4. What is
“The Progressive Era”?
What is progress?arWW
Some people define the word progress as
“growth” or “movement” while others
view it as a “step forward” or a “ladder
reaching upward”.
-Do you agree? Why or why not?

5. Gallery Walk of Images
• What image is being portrayed?
●Concrete Observations
●Outside information which may be relevant
• How is “progress” being defined?
●Possible Interpretations
• What are the “untold stories”?
●Questions raised?

6. Choose one image
• What is going on in this image?
• What do you see that makes you say
that?
• What more can we find?
• What information is given about societal
context of America during the
Progressive Era?
-Visual Thinking Strategy

7. Defining movements of
Progressive Era
• Immigration: 15 million from 1890-1914
• Industrialization: changes where as well as how goods
are made, sparks dissonace between citizenship
concerns and growing economic machine
• Urbanization: closer proximity, lack of infrastructure,
shifting gender roles
• Emancipation: “Free” → equal participation

8. “Clash of Cultures”?
• Production emphasized
• Character
• Scarcity
• Religion
• Past idealized
• Local culture
• Substance
• Consumption emphasized
• Personality
• Abundance
• Science
• Looked to the Future
• Mass Culture
• Image

9. Strategy
Gallery Walk
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-
library/teaching-strategies/gallery-walk
Photographs for Gallery Walk are in
separate slideshow

10. Readings
● “Marvels of a Marvelous Age”–R&M, p. 92-94
● The End of the Frontier - R&M, p. 96-98
● “The Progress” and Poverty - R&M, p. 124-128
● “The Kind of World We Lived In” - R&M, p. 133-139
● Rumors and Fears - R&M, p.129-132

11. Eugenics and Health

12. Key Assumptions of the Eugenics
Movement

13. This graphic appeared in a popular
textbook, General Psychology, as
late as 1961. It was published by
Henry Garrett, Chairman of the
Columbia University
Department of Psychology.

14. Cover of
Social Work
Pamphlet
(1915)

15. How did they identify “unfit”?
Get out your pencils...

16. Experiencing One of the first
IQ Tests: Beta Test 6
•Fix what is wrong with each of the 20 pictures.
•You have only three minutes to complete the
test.
•There is only one right answer.
•Work on your own.
•Begin at the instructor’s command.
(A non-verbal test for those who cannot read or write English.)

17. Beta IQ Test 6
(1917)

18. Controlling public health through
“positive” and “negative”
eugenics policies

19. San Francisco Race Betterment Pavillion
Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915)
San Francisco Race Betterment Pavillion
Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915)

20. Poster from
Race Betterment
Foundation
Battle Creek, Michigan
(1920)

21. First Prize Winner
Best Baby Contest
Battle Creek, Michigan (1914)

22. Eugenic Health Exhibit
Kansas State Fair Topeka, Kansas (1927)

23. American Eugenics Society’s Flashing Light Exhibit
Sesquicentennial Exposition

24. Controlling public health through
“positive” and “negative”
eugenics policies
Nationally: Model Sterilization Law, Buck v. Bell
Locally: Targeting Mexican Americans

25. “Three Generations of
Imbeciles…”
Buck v Bell

27. Vivian Buck

28. The Lynchburg Colony
Significant
Interesting
Troubling

29. Virginia Colony Building

30. in California
Sterilizations
Use of “Public Health”

31. From the Public Health Officer
• Chinatown (1879): “that rotten spot [that
pollutes] the air we breathe and poisons
the water we drink”

32. The danger of visibility – changing
views
• “while warning the public about the dangers immigrants
brought with them, public health officials also offered
their services to work with these newcomers and
transform them into an acceptable workforce. Mexican
men and women were effectively robbed of their adult
status. They were now viewed as and treated like
stubborn children—a whole population who needed to be
overseen, trained, controlled.”

33. L.A. & racial imaginations, 1910
• “The targeting of
Chinese in Los
Angeles was a local
manifestation of a
contemporary national
preoccupation with
yellow peril-influenced
politics. Yellow peril
discourse made the
Chinese a hypervisible
component of the
nation’s racial
imagination.
• For Mexicans, the equivalent racial
discourse was that of Manifest Destiny.
This ideology…portrayed white
Americans as superior to Mexicans
(and Native Americans). … Manifest
Destiny rendered Mexicans less visible
in the public sphere. Expansionists
argued that after the US takeover,
Mexicans (and Native Americans).
would eventually disappear in the
Southwest because these peoples were
not as biologically fit as Americans.”

34. Los Angeles and racial imaginations
• 1930s
• Mexicans’ resistance was
‘lower than that of the white
races, but on the other hand
they were more docile and
obedient.’ Casting Mexicans’
alleged inferior disease
resistance as a byproduct of
their biology made it
unnecessary, and certainly
impractical, to expend funds on
TB prevention and treatment
among this population
• 1910
• For Mexicans, the equivalent racial
discourse was that of Manifest
Destiny. This ideology…portrayed
white Americans as superior to
Mexicans (and Native Americans).
… Manifest Destiny rendered
Mexicans less visible in the public
sphere. Expansionists argued that
after the US takeover, Mexicans
(and Native Americans). would
eventually disappear in the
Southwest because these peoples
were not as biologically fit as
Americans.”

35. Immigration

36. Socratic Seminar
1. Rep. Clarence F. Lea, p. 226-227
2. Rep Adolph Sabath, p. 227-228
3. Rep. Grant Hudson, p. 228-229
4. Rep. Ira Hersey, p. 229
5. Rep. Meyer Jacobstein, p. 229-230
6. Horace Mann, p. 172-173
*Please keep yourself in the timeframe of 1924 for cafe

38. Strategy
Socratic Seminar
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-
strategies/socratic-seminar
Fishbowl
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-
strategies/fishbowl

39. Lunch

40. New Americans Museum

41. Exit Cards